


The Moonlight Can't Compare

by yourobdtst



Category: NCT (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Vampire, Fluff, Frottage, Human/Vampire Relationship, Kissing, Light Angst, M/M, Mild Sexual Content, Rated M for, So much kissing, and mentions of character death even though he didnt really stay dead, but really just a whole lot of love in here folks, vampire taeil specifically
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-13
Updated: 2020-04-13
Packaged: 2021-03-02 01:54:50
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,147
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23607136
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/yourobdtst/pseuds/yourobdtst
Summary: Taeil sighs, and wonders vaguely how his life ended up here—how after over three hundred years alone, he’s here, in someone else’s shadowed shoebox studio apartment in Seoul, tucked into a bed that doesn’t belong to him, trying to decipher a pictured novel written in a language he doesn’t speak.Or, Taeil loves Yuta, now and forever, and Yuta wants to do the same.
Relationships: Moon Taeil/Nakamoto Yuta
Comments: 36
Kudos: 171





	The Moonlight Can't Compare

**Author's Note:**

> hello!! it's becca! here i am again putting off my more difficult projects to write something quick and sweet! but that's okay! because it makes me happy and i want it to make you happy too. i hope it does!!!
> 
> this work was inspired by the work of @mitbili on twitter. specifically the drawing of yuta finding taeil's fangs cute, but all of the vampire au drawing are found in their pinned tweet!! i used quite a few of them for inspiration so take a look and see if you can match up some drawings to scenes ;))
> 
> thank you for clicking and giving this fic a chance!! i hope you enjoy!

“Is the garlic thing true?”

Taeil sits in stillness for a moment, pretending to read his open book, before he dignifies that question with an answer: “What?”

Yuta huffs and rolls his eyes. Taeil has to hold back from letting his lips quirk up in a smile. There’s charm in Yuta’s overdramatics, there’s youth and playfulness.

“The garlic thing,” Yuta repeats. “Is it true? Because I want to order honey garlic noodles for dinner,” he waves his phone in the air, delivery app open, “but I _don’t_ want to order honey garlic noodles if my stupid vampire boyfriend can’t kiss the sauce off my mouth after.”

Taeil sighs, and wonders vaguely how his life ended up here—how after over three hundred years alone, he’s here, in someone else’s shadowed shoebox studio apartment in Seoul, tucked into a bed that doesn’t belong to him, trying to decipher a pictured novel written in a language he doesn’t speak. If he could sleep he would believe that he’s dreaming, that he would never end up this intertwined with a boy so painfully gorgeous, so full of life, if not in his imagination.

Though reality can be better than any dream, Taeil thinks idly, because reality gives him Yuta.

“No, love.” He smiles. “The garlic thing is not true. Though I’m not sure if I’m all that interested in licking sauce off your lips, if I’m honest.”

“Of course you are,” Yuta scoffs. “They’re my lips. You _always_ want to lick them.”

Taeil can’t even fault Yuta for his arrogance, no matter how badly he wants to roll his eyes at him—it’s true, and Taeil would be a liar to say it isn’t. He would spend every waking moment of Yuta’s kissing him if Yuta could just stop talking and let him. Yuta’s mouth is plush and inviting, pursed in concentration as he taps his order into his phone, lips wet and shining from licking them so often. Taeil wants those lips on his own _constantly_ , loves how they bend under his kiss, soft and sweet, Yuta’s breath washing across his face as he sighs and falls deeply into their kisses, gentle and pliant. Yuta is addictive, with the unfortunate addition of being well aware just how addictive he is to Taeil.

“I don’t need sauce to tempt me,” Taeil says, kicking the blankets down off his leg and setting the book aside to free his lap for something much more worthy of his attention. “If I want a kiss, I just take one.”

Yuta eyes his empty lap with a smirk, catlike and eager. Taeil can hear the way his heart starts beating faster, just barely, just enough to dust the softest hint of blush across his cheekbones. It makes him glow. Taeil doesn’t think he’s ever seen anything more beautiful.

“You’re looking to take one now?” He asks, crossing to the bed and sliding into Taeil’s lap, practiced and easy like he’s always belonged there. He relaxes into Taeil’s arms, forehead to forehead, drops his phone to hold Taeil’s jaw in both hands, palms burning hot against his skin. Taeil can hear the way his breathing stutters as he slides his hands around his waist, watches closely as Yuta’s tongue darts out to wet his lips again.

“I’m looking to take several,” Taeil murmurs against Yuta’s lips, the taste of his kisses, of something sharp and fresh, already sweet on his tongue.

***

“What about mirrors?”

Yuta likes to wrap himself around Taeil like a blanket when they’re—ah, _finished_. It’s only a little awkward to manoeuvre, with Yuta actually being _bigger_ than Taeil, though something about being laid out and folded over and taken apart by Taeil’s hands makes Yuta incredibly talented at making himself small, tucking himself tightly into Taeil’s side like so: lips to his collarbone, leg thrown across his hips, arm tight across a chest that doesn’t rise and fall.

Yuta is warm. Incredibly warm, scorching hot, searing the imprint of himself into Taeil’s skin, making it so Taeil will never be rid of him. Taeil just holds him tighter and lets himself burn. He twists his fingers into Yuta’s hair, shaggy and long and rough with bleach, smelling like honey and sweat, traces his other hand up and down Yuta’s thigh, lithe and strong, massaging gently at the bruises forming on Yuta’s hips.

Sometimes Taeil gets carried away and forgets his own strength. Yuta really doesn’t seem to mind. Yuta makes him feel things he hasn’t felt in centuries, like love, like _passion_ , and Taeil is finding there’s so many different ways to feel _warm_.

“What about them?” Taeil murmurs between kisses across Yuta’s crown.

Yuta nips playfully at his neck. His teeth don’t even make a dimple, let alone leave any trace.

“Can you really not see your own reflection?”

Taeil hums, low in his throat. The taste of Yuta is still heady across his tongue, tart but soothingly sweet, making his voice rough.

“I can now,” he says. “Mirrors aren’t backed with silver anymore, they’re made backed aluminum.”

Yuta runs his fingers in circles in the centre of Taeil’s chest. “So the silver thing _is_ true, then.”

“Yes.”

“How true?” Yuta is talking all together _far_ too much for having just been fucked, Taeil believes, so perhaps Taeil didn’t do a good enough job tiring him out the first time. Perhaps he needs to try again.

“What do you mean?” Taeil grips at Yuta’s thigh, just above the curve of his knee, and pulls his leg higher, presses Yuta’s groin tighter to his hip. Yuta groans at the pressure, still sensitive, but he rocks just slightly into Taeil’s body anyways, because he’s a minx, and he can never get enough.

Taeil is glad he doesn’t sleep anymore—he probably never _would_ , sharing a bed with this one.

“I mean, like,” Yuta twists his neck to nip at Taeil’s ear, then follows his bite with a kiss. “Can you touch it? Would you die?”

Taeil laughs. “No, I wouldn’t _die_. It would just burn me—melt my skin, kind of. It would hurt.”

“Would you heal from it?” Yuta licks the corner of Taeil’s jaw, noses down his jugular, starts to suck at the hollow between his collarbones like he thinks he can leave a mark. His hips never stop their gentle rocking, and Taeil twists himself to be able to get some friction of his own against Yuta’s sharp hip bone.

“I would,” Taeil gasps into Yuta’s hair, clutching tighter, grinding harder. He feels like he’s set alight, like Yuta has a forest fire under his fingertips, on his lips, and Taeil is all too happy to let himself be engulfed. “If I fed, I would. But you know I— _ah_ —I don’t feed.”

“So I—” Yuta cuts himself off with a whimper, body shaking. “So I definitely _shouldn’t_ switch all my earrings out for sterling silver, then.”

Taeil barks a single laugh, desire quenched with what feels like ice water down his back, shoving Yuta off him. He whines like it isn’t his own fault.

“Do _not_ ,” Taeil chuckles. “You absolute menace, _do not_.”

***

“I want to bring you hiking with me.”

Yuta’s scent spikes to a disastrously alluring level when he’s been sweating, Taeil learned this early. Yuta is so fond of the outdoors, sun tinting his skin brown and red, freckles spattered across his nose and shoulders. Yuta is a force, an all consuming energy, and his body needs the freedom of the outdoors, needs the crisp bite of fresh air lest he wither away.

Yuta, Taeil thinks, is a flower. Beautiful, blooming, sweet, reaching for the sun—and gone far too soon.

Taeil quietly closes the lid on the stew he’s made for Yuta’s dinner, so he wouldn’t have to slave in the kitchen after exerting himself all day. “Are the trails open at night?” He asks, brushing his hands clean with a dish towel.

Yuta hops up onto the counter, seating himself beside the stove and swinging his legs, biting the skin around his thumbnail. The smell of his still-racing blood spins around Taeil, intoxicating, and he can’t help but push Yuta’s legs apart to fit himself between them, nosing at the dew of sweat on Yuta’s collarbones.

“I think so,” Yuta says, but Taeil can hear the frown in his voice. “But it wouldn’t be the same, it’d be dark, the view won’t be as nice. You wouldn’t hear the birds.”

“Well, if we go during the day, all you’ll hear is your boyfriend screaming in agony.” Taeil teases.

Yuta huffs. “Of _course_ the sun thing is true.”

“Have you _ever_ seen me open the blinds?”

Yuta doesn’t bother answering, just winds his gangly arms and legs around Taeil’s entire body, pulling them tightly together, drawing Taeil’s lips to his own and kissing him soundly, a tightness leaving his body at the feeling of coming home to Taeil’s arms. They kiss languid, loving, there in the kitchen for the smallest eternity Taeil has ever known. Taeil drinks in the feeling of Yuta’s sun-showered, overheated skin with his ice-cold palms, and Yuta drinks in the taste of adoration from Taeil’s lips.

“It’s not like silver, then?” Yuta asks into Taeil’s mouth. Taeil just sighs, resolves to kiss him harder so his mind stops wandering away from Taeil’s touch.

It works, if only for a while. Yuta is content to be kissed silly for only so long before the annoyance at being ignored sets in.

“Hey,” he bites Taeil’s lip. Taeil spends a half second wondering if he should bite back, to teach him a lesson. 

“I asked you a question.” Yuta snarks.

“I heard,” Taeil shifts on his feet, eyes on Yuta’s red lips as he licks them. “I chose to disregard it.”

Yuta rolls his eyes. “Well, don’t. I want to know. You _said_ you could heal from touching silver if you fed. Is it the same with the sun? If you fed, could you go outside?”

The thing about love, Taeil finds, about knowing someone so deeply, about holding them in your arms and your mind every day, is that eventually that someone becomes transparent. Your eyes become attuned to their every shape, and words are hardly needed, emotions are simply _known_. Taeil knows Yuta, profoundly and gladly, and knows exactly why Yuta is asking.

But the other thing about love, Taeil has had the misfortune to find, is that it makes him powerless to stop _giving_ , to stop offering Yuta anything he wants, to stop kneeling at his altar and offering his heart whatever will appease it. Yuta’s eyes are round and imploring, desperate and hopeful, full of light and youth and love. Taeil can’t resist him.

So: “Yes,” Taeil says truthfully. “If I fed, fresh, directly from a living body, I would have enough strength to walk in the sun for a day or two. It’s not that it wouldn’t hurt me, it still would, but I would heal almost instantly.”

Yuta hums. He levels Taeil with a loaded gaze, eyes dark and swimming with something devious—and something tender, something sweet. He’s biting his lip.

He tilts his head back, baring his throat, and Taeil is already shaking his head.

“How much?” Yuta asks anyways. “How much would you need to come for a walk with me?”

“Too much,” Taeil answers immediately. Any amount from Yuta is too much, a single _drop_ is too much, Yuta is too sweet and lovely and _dear_ to Taeil for him to even consider taking and drinking from him. He can’t hurt Yuta in such a way, can’t scar his skin and leave him weak and dizzy—he can’t, and he _won’t_.

“Come on,” Yuta grabs him by the shoulders and shakes him. “There’s so much I want to show you. We can’t spend our whole lives inside—”

“ _You_ don’t have to,” Taeil interrupts him, perhaps a little more sternly than intended. “And _I_ have gotten used to it.”

Yuta deflates immediately. His eyes cast downwards, his hands fall limply from Taeil’s shoulders to his waist. “But I can help. You don’t _have_ to be used to it anymore,” he mutters.

Taeil smiles, small and sad. “It’s not so bad, love,” he says, tender and a touch apologetic, brushing sweaty strands of Yuta’s hair out of his eyes. “This apartment, it’s not a prison. It’s a home. It’s where I stay and it’s where you come back to me, every day. How could I hate that?”

“You don’t miss it? Being outdoors, or the sun—any of it?”

“I’ve come to love the night. The stillness, the stars, it’s all its own kind of beautiful.” Taeil lays a chaste kiss to Yuta’s pouting lips, delighted at how eager he gets kissed back.

“You outshine the sun anyways,” Taeil kisses the words into Yuta’s skin, hoping they reach his heart.

If Yuta’s loud scoff and blushing cheeks is anything to go by, they very much do.

***

“How did it happen?”

Taeil softens his playing, slowing his fingers across the piano keys and pressing his foot gently to the leftmost pedal, quieting his tune not so much for the sake of his own hearing, but Yuta’s. The piano is tucked in the corner, near the bed, and Taeil spends hours every day trying to recreate songs he remembers from centuries ago, heard with straining ears from his hiding spot in the gardens surrounding old theatres. 

“Be more specific?” Taeil asks. He hears Yuta rustle behind him on the bed, cotton sheets sliding across his bare skin with a hushed rasp. Yuta sleeps nearly naked, much to the suffering of Taeil’s self control throughout the night, and Taeil knows well the way his breathing changes when he finally wakes up—wakes up, and doesn’t move, doesn’t shift, just listens to Taeil play, serenade him into wakefulness, every morning.

“Like,” Yuta shifts again, stretching, groaning quietly. Taeil gets the image of a sleepy kitten in his mind. “How did—you know, _this_ happen?”

“How did I learn to play? By ear, mostly.”

“No,” Yuta mumbles. Taeil hears the soft wet sound of his mouth opening, then a click against his teeth—he’s biting his fingernail again.

“I mean when you got turned,” he clarifies. “What happened?”

Ah. Taeil nods slowly, softens his playing even more. He doesn’t stop, chooses to keep his fingers moving in a slight distraction, and maybe in the hopes that the story will fall onto the pillow of music and not sound so ugly when he tells it. It isn’t a nice story, and Taeil thinks it’s very much not what Yuta is expecting, but Taeil can’t deny him his curiosity, so he’s best to press his keys in practiced motions and tell it anyways.

“I don’t think he meant to turn me,” Taeil says. “I think he meant to drain me and leave me to die.”

Yuta’s heartbeat starts to hammer. Taeil hears his mouth open, then close. Definitely not what he was expecting, then, Taeil thinks.

The memories are hazy—human memories fade so readily, that living, breathing part of the person Taeil once was dying so readily once he awoke and found eternity ahead of him. He doesn’t even remember how he came across the vampire that turned him. He doesn’t even remember his name. He just remembers that it hurt, and then it didn’t, and then his mortal life ended.

“I suppose I don’t know that for sure,” Taeil mutters. “But I think if he meant to turn me, he wouldn’t have left my body on the beach when he was finished.”

Taeil has had a very long time to think about it—a very long time to wonder, to dissect, why his sire left him the way he did. And Taeil thinks it was because he never meant to be a sire: he meant to feed, to drain a frail little human in the shadows by the sea, and leave his body on the sand for the tides to wash away. But Taeil figures he was young, inexperienced, using far too much venom to subdue Taeil, enough to keep his heart beating long enough for the venom to work its course through Taeil’s body and rewake him when he died.

“The sun was searing my skin.” Taeil recalls. He can almost feel the burn again, like molten glass across his flesh, like a thousand lashes across his entire body all at once, like hell itself opening and washing him down. It’s nothing like the fire of Yuta’s touch across his skin, hot with love, dripping over him sticky and sweet like honey.

“I had enough human blood left in me that it didn’t kill me, but it _hurt_. He had taken so much, I barely had enough left in me to heal, but he used too much venom when he bit, so instead of killing me, I—”

He cuts himself off with a sigh. He stops playing.

“I turned.” He shrugs.

Everything is quiet for a long while. Taeil holds himself still, listens hard at the sound of Yuta’s heart hammering, the sound of his throat constricting as he swallows. Then—the rustle of bedsheets as he slides out of bed and crosses softly, footsteps delicate pads across the floor, to come behind Taeil, circling his arms around his shoulders and resting his lips on his crown.

“I’m glad, for what it’s worth,” He murmurs, and Taeil feels the reverberation of his voice all the way down his spine. Yuta is fire, hotter than the sun, but he doesn’t leave burns in his wake, he leaves a glow. He leaves Taeil sun-kissed with a wash of love.

“I’m sorry you didn’t get to choose it,” Yuta mumbles. “But I’m happy I get to have you now because of it. Is that alright?”

Taeil has spent so long hating it—decades, _centuries_ even, hating the way he is, the way it happened, the way he lost so much because of it. The way he never came face to face with his family or friends again, too scared of how they would react, but watched them under the shadow of night, watched over as the years came and went and their lives ended and were washed away by the passage of time. The way he couldn’t bear to know anyone again, just to watch them wither and die as well. The way he spent ages at odds with himself, feeding and hating himself for the harm it caused, just so he could walk in the daylight and feel a little less lonely.

Taeil has hated what he is for a long while, but when Yuta holds him—when Yuta introduced himself, sleepy but confident, in the library they first met in; when Yuta took his face in his hands and kissed him for the first time by the moonlight on the pier; when Yuta fixed him with a hard look and said what Taeil was didn’t scare him—when Yuta holds him, tender and loving and timeless, he can’t find it in his heart to be angry anymore. Taeil’s life may be shrouded in darkness now, but Yuta is bright, and that’s enough.

“It’s alright, my love,” Taeil smiles. He circles Yuta’s hands with his own, brings them up to his lips to kiss each of his knuckles. “I’m happy too. I never thought I would be, but I am.”

***

“Would you—?”

Taeil cuts off Yuta’s question with another searing kiss. Yuta makes a soft disgruntled noise in his throat, but doesn’t seem too perturbed with the interruption—he kisses back with enthusiasm, spit-slick and needy, fingernails clawing at Taeil’s back where he’s slid his hands up his shirt, trying to pull their bodies closer.

Yuta is overwhelming in all the best ways. Taeil can feel the rabbit pace of Yuta’s heartbeat against his own chest, loud and deafening in his ears. Yuta’s breath comes in gasps between wet kisses, washing across Taeil’s cheeks and making him shiver, and Taeil can feel every flutter of his eyelashes, every twitch of his body within Taeil’s arms, can taste on his tongue how strong his desire is.

“Taeil—” Yuta tries again, but Taeil just sinks his fingers into Yuta’s hair at the base of his neck and reels him back in for another kiss. Taeil will never be finished with him. Taeil will never have enough, it feels like Taeil could kiss him like this all day, every day, until Yuta withers into nothing, and Taeil will spend the rest of his unnatural life wishing he could have had him for longer.

There is adoration in the way Yuta’s lips pillow his own. There is desire in the bold swipes of his tongue across Taeil’s teeth, just barely missing the point of his fangs. There is a searing, burning need, lit like matchsticks, in the way his body twists in Taeil’s lap, pressing ever closer, chest to chest and still trying to burrow even deeper.

Yuta nips at his bottom lip. It doesn’t hurt—Yuta’s body is so weak, so frail compared to Taeil’s, Yuta could never hurt him, but it catches his attention enough to let Yuta pull away, for a moment.

Yuta gasps lightly for air. His chest rises and falls heavily, his lips are swollen and red, his eyes are half lidded with the pupils blown wide. Taeil thinks Yuta is beautiful in a thousand different ways—illuminated by moonlight, caught mid-laughter, asleep in Taeil’s arms—but this way is Taeil’s favourite way. Warm, debauched, so, _so_ human.

“Would you turn me?” He asks, eyes wide, telling, wanting.

If Taeil’s heart were still beating, he thinks it would run his blood cold.

“No,” is his immediate answer, because _no_. Because Taeil is selfish enough to want it, of course, selfish enough to envision never having to watch Yuta grow old and wither away, never having to come to terms with losing the best thing that ever happened to him. But Taeil is not so selfish as to allow Yuta to sacrifice his natural life and all it entails for eternity—no matter how _badly_ he wants Yuta for eternity.

Yuta slumps in his lap. His eyes trail down to Taeil’s lips, wet and pale, skin an unchanging ashy white. He stares for a while at where Taeil’s shirt collar is unbuttoned low onto his chest, where there’s no movement—no breath, no heartbeat, no life.

“Why not?” He asks, and it’s small. It’s not the Yuta Taeil knows, brash and colourful. It’s shy.

“Why would I?” Taeil asks in response.

Yuta meets his eyes, gaze searching. “Because I love you,” he murmurs. “Because—because you love me? I think?”

“You _think_?” Taeil chokes on the taste of Yuta souring in his mouth. “I—Yuta, I _do_ , how could you question that? What could make you think I don’t?”

Where had he gone wrong, Taeil wonders. He knows he’s bad at telling his feelings with words, but he spends every moment by Yuta’s side trying to tell him he loves him with every touch, every gesture, every kiss laid across his body and every moan he wrings out of him. Had he gone wrong, somewhere in their time spent twined together? Where had he ever made Yuta doubt himself and what he means to Taeil? When had he not showered Yuta in enough adoration and let the darkness of doubt creep into his heart? Taeil is _selfish_ —Yuta’s heart belongs to him, belongs to their love, Taeil can’t _stand_ that there’s space enough for something so ugly inside of it.

“We’re going to be together forever, right?” Yuta asks in return. His hands fidget with the edge of Taeil’s shirt in his lap.

Taeil feels nervousness stirring inside him at the phrasing. He holds Yuta’s waist in one hand, reaches up to trail the fingers of the other across the soft curve of Yuta’s jawline. A heartbeat flutters nervously under his touch, racing faster than when their lips were together.

“For as long as you live, my love, yes.” Taeil says.

Yuta’s breath stutters, caught in his throat, and his eyes cast downwards again. When he speaks, it’s low, and watery, and Taeil aches when he realizes Yuta is trying not to cry.

“But that could be forever.” Yuta’s hands are starting to shake, fiddling with the buttons on Taeil’s shirt. “If you wanted it— _me_.”

“Yuta,” Taeil murmurs, soft and placating. He leans forward, puts himself back into Yuta’s space, his lips at Yuta’s cheek. “Of course I want you, I want you every moment I can have you.”

“So why _not_?” Yuta folds himself down into Taeil’s chest, buries his wet eyes and red face into the curve of Taeil’s neck, shaky breath and shaky heart rattling against Taeil. Taeil hates this—he _hates_ this, hates that Yuta is hurting for this, hates even more that Yuta wants this.

That Yuta wants this even more than he does.

“Yuta, it’s—it’s more than just wanting each other, it’s not something you can take back—”

“How long have you been alone?” Yuta suddenly asks.

Taeil is still for a moment. “What?”

“How long were you alone, before me?” Yuta says again. His voice is thin and weak and quieter than it has ever been, but he knows Taeil will hear him loud and clear. “How many years?”

For a long time, Taeil is quiet. For a long time, he just holds Yuta to his chest, rakes fingernails softly through his hair, counts the breaths that Yuta pulls in and out, shaky but steady, because he knows no matter how this conversation goes, those breaths are numbered.

“Always.” Taeil finally answers. “You’re the first—ever.”

Three hundred years. Three entire centuries Taeil has spent hiding on his own, moving silently from place to place, never settling long enough to make more than an acquaintance. He had chosen to never seek more of his own kind. He had chosen to not make another. He awoke under the searing sun of the beach to a new, unending life, and chose to live it alone.

He had not chosen Yuta. Yuta is a force, a light, brighter than any sun, and Taeil’s cold, dead heart had no choice but to warm—no choice but to fall.

“You don’t want to be alone again.” Yuta says resolutely, a trace of the Yuta that Taeil loves so much in his cracking voice, self assured and bold.

“I was used to it before,” Taeil murmurs. “I can get used to it again.”

“You don’t want to lose me.” Yuta pulls back to look in his eyes. “And you don’t have to.”

But he will—Taeil will lose him, lose some of the finest parts of him, the tint to his cheeks and the warmth of his breath. Taeil will lose the way his heart pounds the loudest at the soft press of Taeil’s lips to his inner thighs, the way he blushes down to his chest when Taeil kisses him awake with the promise of another day of love on his tongue. He will lose how soft, how pliable his skin is, sunshine kissed, how his blood sings in his veins, a scent so fresh, so sweet, so molten under his skin, against Taeil’s lips. Taeil will lose so many of the parts he fell in love with, to be replaced with red eyes, fangs in his mouth, the sharp tang of venom colouring the scent he so loves into something different.

Taeil is selfish enough to want to keep him forever; but he is also selfish enough to want to keep him unchanged, unturned, just the way he is. Taeil is selfish enough to want him human, even though he knows it hurts Yuta more than the repercussions of being turned would.

“It hurts,” Taeil murmurs. “I can’t hurt you, Yuta, I—”

“It doesn’t hurt forever, you know that. I forgive you in advance.”

Taeil would laugh, if he didn’t feel like his head was spinning.

“You won’t be able to go outside,” he tries again. “All those hiking trails you wanted to take me on, you won’t—”

“I know. That’s okay. You said you learned to find the night beautiful,” Yuta reaches up to brush his fingers against Taeil’s lips, touch soft and warm. Taeil parts his lips immediately, doesn’t fight when Yuta pulls at the corner of his upper lip, exposing one fang for Yuta to peer at with his dewy, red-rimmed eyes.

“You can teach me to find it beautiful, too.” Yuta smiles, and Taeil thinks the moonlight can’t compare.

“That’s why I’ve been asking so much,” Yuta continues. His fingertip strokes over the surface of Taeil’s fang, and Taeil tenses to pull away if he tries to pierce himself. “About you. About your life. So that I know what I’m giving up.”

Taeil wants to roll his eyes. Of _course_ , it should have been obvious, it was never just a playful curiosity, it was _research_. Taeil fed right into it without even knowing.

He also wants to laugh, despite it all. Yuta is staring down an irreversible change, and wanted to know if he would be able to see himself in the mirror afterwards.

Yuta keeps stroking over his fang. Taeil lets him, lets him take a good look, and watches his eyes for any hesitation. He finds none, just a watery smile, a lot of hope, more love than Taeil ever would have thought he could be graced with.

Taeil pulls away from Yuta’s hand. “You’ll watch your family die,” he tells him. “And all of your friends. You’ll outlive them all. Is that alright?”

“No,” Yuta says. “But I’ll have you when that happens, and all the time in the world to heal.”

Taeil sighs.

“I’m a big boy,” Yuta smirks a little, then nuzzles himself back into his favourite spot, face tucked into Taeil’s neck, arms around his waist underneath his shirt, _warm_. So warm. “I can make my own decisions.”

Taeil is selfish—and in love. In love with a human boy whose heart races hot against his own chest, whose slender, breakable body rests in his, in love with every facet of his heart that he’s opened to Taeil. And isn’t it love? To grow, and change with someone? Wouldn’t it be amazing to fall in love with Yuta again, fall in love with every change the turn gives him, to hear him laugh, see him smile, and know it will never darken or fade? To consign the human parts of him to memory, just fall in love with him again, every day, forever?

Taeil is selfish.

“Alright,” he says, and he kisses Yuta’s throat, kisses the heartbeat that flutters like it knows it will end soon. “Alright.”

**Author's Note:**

> :)))))
> 
> i, like taeil, am powerless to deny yuta anything
> 
> thank you for reading!! let me know what you think! you can find me on my twitter @minhyungsmommy or my cc, username is yourobdtst, come say hi!!
> 
> \- becca


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